• zerrodefex (unregistered) in reply to triso
    triso:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

    You mean fish tank - say 2 gal/day for 3 weeks, so a 50 gallon tank ought to suffice!

    A plumber or HVAC person should be able to get there in three weeks.  Good luck moving a full 50 gallon fish tank to drain it.

     

    Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. 

  • (cs) in reply to Woody
    Anonymous:
    ...
    Oh, and it was 90*F in there (according to the temp monitor that was screaming an alarm on one of the boxes above us in the same rack).  They were "replacing their A/C system".  I came by again several months later.  Still working on it.
    Companies that lie to their customers burn my britches, cook my goose and make me see red.
  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:
    triso:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

    You mean fish tank - say 2 gal/day for 3 weeks, so a 50 gallon tank ought to suffice!

    A plumber or HVAC person should be able to get there in three weeks.  Good luck moving a full 50 gallon fish tank to drain it.

     

    Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. 

     Easy fix. 20 lb sledge to the side of the tank, drain, replace.

  • (cs)

    Everytime I've seen something like this (and this is not even the second or third I've seen, though it is the first one with a sexy bowl instead of the ubiquitous 5 gallon bucket) it was because the high-mukety mucks who set the budgets set aside no money for a real cooling system, and decided that something like this was "just as good" as a real cooling set up.

  • Pornholio (unregistered)

    That's nothing.  A while back I visited a company in DC.  Their technology drone (CTO) purchased a portable AC unit.  They did this because the room they decided to convert to a server room would cost them $nn,nnn to retrofit for a real A/C unit.  No way they were going to pay real money for that.  This is a fairly small office of less than 50 people, although the principals are extremely wealthy.  Ex chairs of NASD, SEC, etc.

    The combination of the heat generated from the equipment, humidity and condensation from this unit resulted in significantly higher output than a fish bowl.  Solution?  A full-size outdoors trash can.  Holds 32+ gallons of water.

    Next problem: on long weekends or snow days, 32 gallons wasn't enough and it would overtop the trash can, and they were back to a water incursion problem.

    Solution?  Buy a Sensaphone, and have it call IT drone when the trash can overtops.  He could come in on the long weekend and "drain" the can.  Which is another hilarious process, as it involves two-staging the water from the big immovable can (250 lbs of water) to something smaller, like a mop bucket, so it required at least five trips.  The draining process ritual occurred every mornnig

    I suspect they may have taken this to the next level by now and have a big vat on wheels with an electric pump for the morning ritual.

    Fskwits. 
     

  • Woody (unregistered) in reply to triso

    Well, they were working on it then, and still were a couple months later. The place was torn apart, ducting hangin down, and a fan trying desperately to get the slightly cooler air to flow through the server racks.


    captcha:  craptastic <- good description of their cooling system.  (oh, and it was early march, in the SF Bay Area)

  • Programmer dork (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

     They do, which is exactly why you need to vent them like so...

     [image]

  • (cs) in reply to Programmer dork
    Anonymous:

     They do, which is exactly why you need to vent them like so...

     [image]

    I like how the open ceiling tile lets it bleed back into the room, and the fans give it a nice regal air, sentries around the king. xD The ones I've worked with plugged into vents that go up to the roof, which entirely prevents recirculation, though the tiles might well be insulated enough. Not really my area. (Except for the moron HVAC guys who once installed it with the tube duct taped to cardboard to plug the hole left by the old installation - until the duct tape came off, two hours later.)

  • doc0tis (unregistered)

    Reminds me of my server room.

     

    BTW last week I accidently disconnect the entire company off our enterprise application because when I turned around I disconnected a cable that run's part of the way down the wall, along the floor, into a switch (which is on the floor behind three network cabinets). This is because we're "too busy" to do anything properly.

     

    --doc0tis 

  • Mazer (unregistered)

    Here's "The Registers" take on a similar situation:

     

    http://regmedia.co.uk/2002/10/08/891.jpg



    From the article here:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/08/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/ 

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Anonymous:

    There are plenty of ac units designed for shitty server rooms that use a duct to vent hot air into the plenum space in the ceiling, while draining water to a bin or floor drain. The good ones usually have a float to tell when the, um, fishbowl fills up, and then they either shut off or sound an alarm. 

    We have a half-arsed designed server room. The A/C was underspecced so we got a large industrial portable unit in. The heat was vented to the plenum. However, to make the server room fire-proofy, the plenum of the server room was not connected to the plenum of the rest of the floor (drywall went all the way up) so we ended up having to get someone in to cut holes in the drywall.

     

    You think that two years later they'd listen to us regarding what is needed in the new server room now we're moving to a new building. Wouldn't you?

  • tina turner (unregistered)

    Why didn't anyone try a bucket sort pun? 

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to foxyshadis
    foxyshadis:

    I like how the open ceiling tile lets it bleed back into the room, and the fans give it a nice regal air, sentries around the king. xD The ones I've worked with plugged into vents that go up to the roof, which entirely prevents recirculation, though the tiles might well be insulated enough. Not really my area. (Except for the moron HVAC guys who once installed it with the tube duct taped to cardboard to plug the hole left by the old installation - until the duct tape came off, two hours later.)

    The Plenum is usually the return for the building AC so it is fairly reasonable to vent the hot outlet up there. Heat also rises so you shouldn't get too much bleed back through the holes at the side.

     

    Rich 

  • Olddog (unregistered)

    No No No No. The A/C runoff hose needs to drain directly into a humidifier equipped with a float ball lever that triggers the power supply A/C unit. When the humidifier gets low on water, it kicks on the A/C. Once replenished, the float turns off the power to the A/C unit.

    To regulate the evaporation rate of the humidifier, point an oscillating floor fan at the humidifier. This system can be enhanced by multiple outlet strips and lamp timers. Ultimately you'll want to employ some type of UPS.

     

  • (cs) in reply to tina turner

    Anonymous:
    Why didn't anyone try a bucket sort pun? 

    Nobody seemed to notice my overflow puns, so I didn't think it was worth it. 

  • Olddog (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:
    triso:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

    You mean fish tank - say 2 gal/day for 3 weeks, so a 50 gallon tank ought to suffice!

    A plumber or HVAC person should be able to get there in three weeks.  Good luck moving a full 50 gallon fish tank to drain it.

     

    Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. 

     Empty several cans of chicken stock into the water and ten dogs will drink it down to a mangable weight in minutes.

  • D (unregistered) in reply to Neo
    Anonymous:
    I call bulls*it on this "story"; I've seen this picture years ago...

    Agreed - seen the pic years ago too.

  • Tub (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:

    They've got an enclosed server rack there.  What they could be doing is ducting the cold air from the A/C to the rack intake vents, which would keep the server cool without needing to vent the hot air anywhere.

     That's the idea!

     
    - make sure the server rack is completely enclosed. I mean really, 100% air- and water-tight enclosed.

    - add a hole, stick the cold air outlet from the portable A/C into it. duct-tape it there. Twice. We don't want any of the precious cold air to escape, do we?

    - set up a camera, wait for the server rack to explode

    - submit to theDailyWTF.com
     

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymouse
    Anonymous:
     Easy fix. 20 lb sledge to the side of the tank, drain, replace.

    No no no, silly.  Everyone knows you turn the AC off, then let the heat from the servers evaporate the water.
  • Olddog (unregistered) in reply to themagni
    themagni:

    Alien426:
    Could somebody come up with an overflow joke, please? I got nothing.

     

    "Most overflow problems cause a loss of stability in the program. This one causes a lack of stability for anyone entering the room."

    or

    "The server crashed every 48 hours due to an overflow vunerability in the server setup. The only fix was to manually flush the cache."

    or

    "The overflow problem can be solved by using the pipeline."

    There is some genuine merit to your thinking. However we have to think past the short term solution.

    A) "The only fix was to manually flush the cache."
    B) "The overflow problem can be solved by using the pipeline."

    Clearly the pipeline connects to the toilet reservoir tank ( cache ). Flushing the toilet would obviously clear the cache. However this presents a dependency problem. No?

  • (cs) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:

    Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. 

     

    Or 1kg per litre. Hmmm, is metric easier to work things out or what?

  • Zygo (unregistered) in reply to Mazer
    Anonymous:

    Here's "The Registers" take on a similar situation:

     

    http://regmedia.co.uk/2002/10/08/891.jpg



    From the article here:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/08/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/ 

     

    I dunno...worst case, you'll lose some backup media (although those plastic shells are fairly watertight), some manuals, a couple of monitors.  Unless you get serious floor-level flooding the UPS and other equipment on the floor will probably not drown (and most floors/walls have some kind of leak somewhere which should absorb water at the rate the A/C spits it out).  Most of the equipment is in cases so splash damage is unlikely.   It's a different story if the two buckets actually fall off the top shelf, of course.

    Now, if the buckets were located on the top left just to the right of where they are, they can take out switches, flow electrolyte-laden water along network cables, and get into that open PC case at the bottom.  That would do some serious harm with just a few drops of water.
     

  • Olddog (unregistered) in reply to tina turner

    Anonymous:
    Why didn't anyone try a bucket sort pun? 

    Have you ever tried to sort a bucket of minnows? It's not possible. Perhaps a bucket of eggs or a bucket of rocks. Bucket sort is lottery logic.

  • PseudoNoise (unregistered) in reply to Olddog
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Why didn't anyone try a bucket sort pun? 

    Have you ever tried to sort a bucket of minnows? It's not possible. Perhaps a bucket of eggs or a bucket of rocks. Bucket sort is lottery logic.

    Sure it's possible.  Just select two minnows at a time and select the greater of them.  Same as with any other animal.  Well, except for weevils.

     

  • operagost (unregistered)

    The REAL WTF is paying $2,000 to clean some water off a standard, unraised, cheap tile floor.  Unless that's whatever the stuff in the strapped box is worth.

  • rob_squared (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

     

    Sorry, the law of conservation of energy is still in effect.  But if you find a way to convert that excess heat energy into matter, I would hope you'd find better uses than in air conditioning. 

  • Vossekop (unregistered) in reply to AssimilatedByBorg
    AssimilatedByBorg:

    Been there.  Done that.  Mopped up the floor.  Upgraded the Bucket to "Bigger Bucket".

    (Pump and hose to drain finally installed a few months ago...)
     

    Same here, had some problems installing the drain correctly due to the server room being underground. We recently moved to a bigger building, all is well now.
  • PseudoNoise (unregistered) in reply to PseudoNoise
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Why didn't anyone try a bucket sort pun? 

    Have you ever tried to sort a bucket of minnows? It's not possible. Perhaps a bucket of eggs or a bucket of rocks. Bucket sort is lottery logic.

    Sure it's possible.  Just select two minnows at a time and select the greater of them.  Same as with any other animal.  Well, except for weevils.

    Oh c'mon, nobody's going to ask me why you take the greater of two animals for everything except weevils? 

  • Jeff (unregistered) in reply to PseudoNoise
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Sure it's possible.  Just select two minnows at a time and select the greater of them.  Same as with any other animal.  Well, except for weevils.

    Oh c'mon, nobody's going to ask me why you take the greater of two animals for everything except weevils? 

    Soooo. Why take the greater of two animals for everything except weevils?

  • (cs) in reply to Jeff

    'cos you always pick the lesser of two weevils.

     

  • PC Paul (unregistered) in reply to tin

    We must have heavier water in the UK, it's 10lbs/gallon. Much easier to work with than 1kg/litre when the original size was in gallons...

    Also, a 50 gallon fishtank here would have a greater safety margin before overflowing. Problem solved!

    (Well, I've seen consultants who added just enough capacity to a system for it to appear to work until they were paid and gone, it only seems fair for me to do the same thing...)  

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to tin
    tin:
    Anonymous:

    Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. 

     

    Or 1kg per litre. Hmmm, is metric easier to work things out or what?



    Especially since a real gallon of water is roughly ten pounds. ("A gallon of water/weights a pound and a quarter")

    It's those wussy short-weight US ones that aren't.
  • ChrisH (unregistered)

    Please don't tell me you poured the sysadmin's sea monkey farm down the drain!

  • (cs)

    I think this server room is even better. Just imagine what happends in the case of "overflow"... 

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/08/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/

    Close up picture:

    http://regmedia.co.uk/2002/10/08/891.jpg 

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:

    Well, what do you expect when 1/4 the population is retarded.

    Goatcheez, if you quote statistics from South Park you should mention that as your source. Makes your post more believable. Never trust statistics without a source reference.

  • obnoxious grammar police asshole (unregistered) in reply to Cody
    Anonymous:
    Carnildo:
    CodeRage:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    I was going to say the same thing.  Unless this unit has a second component located outside the room, it is only going to generate heat.  In that case, they could just point a fan at the server (if they even need to do this), and let the buildings central AC keep the room cool as a whole.


    They've got an enclosed server rack there.  What they could be doing is ducting the cold air from the A/C to the rack intake vents, which would keep the server cool without needing to vent the hot air anywhere.

    Except that eventually the ambient temperature would become so high that the difference through cooling wouldn't be able to make up for it and the rack temperature would increase. 



    At my company we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
  • mnature (unregistered) in reply to operagost

    Anonymous:
    The REAL WTF is paying $2,000 to clean some water off a standard, unraised, cheap tile floor.  Unless that's whatever the stuff in the strapped box is worth.

    Nope.  The water just needed a sponge and bucket.  The $2000 was for the brand-new color laser-jet printer that was in the room right below this one . . .

     

  • mnature (unregistered) in reply to DrPizza
    DrPizza:

    'cos you always pick the lesser of two weevils.

    The goggles!!!  They do nothing!!!!!!!!

  • (cs) in reply to Dave
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

     

    You mean they need a bowl that goes to "11" ? :) 

  • (cs) in reply to AssimilatedByBorg

    The real solution to this problem is to delegate this problem. Drill a hole in the floor. Hope the CEO has his office below the server room. done.

  • Jeremy H (unregistered)

    I can totally top a fishbowl...

    At my company, (not some rinky-dink firm, but a two-billion-dollar company, in case you are wondering), I run a server room. In the days of yore, the server room had a Halon fire suppression system. This was a problem because due to insurance regulations, we had to do a test discharge it once a year. But this caused an environmental impact because Halon is poisonous, so various fines and ISO violations ensued. As a result, our plant manager insisted the Halon system be replaced. With a next-generation, non-toxic Halon replacement, you might think? No...

    ...with water sprinklers.

    All I have to say is that if those sumbitches go off and our million-dollar server room is annihilated, I will not make it my round-the-clock, 7-days-a-week Crimson Alert project to rebuild it. Instead, I will be collecting my two weeks of vacation and walking out the door...

    captcha: pizza (I could go for some right now!)

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anonymous:

    We have a half-arsed designed server room. The A/C was underspecced so we got a large industrial portable unit in. The heat was vented to the plenum. However, to make the server room fire-proofy, the plenum of the server room was not connected to the plenum of the rest of the floor (drywall went all the way up) so we ended up having to get someone in to cut holes in the drywall.

    You think that two years later they'd listen to us regarding what is needed in the new server room now we're moving to a new building. Wouldn't you?

    Doesn't that defeat the "fire-proofiness" of the server room?  Which makes it against, um, local fire codes or something.

  • Cody (unregistered) in reply to Bellinghman
    Bellinghman:
    tin:
    Anonymous:

    Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. 

     

    Or 1kg per litre. Hmmm, is metric easier to work things out or what?



    Especially since a real gallon of water is roughly ten pounds. ("A gallon of water/weights a pound and a quarter")

    It's those wussy short-weight US ones that aren't.

    For reference, from Google:
    <font size="+1">1 Imperial gallon = 1.2 US gallon</font>

  • PseudoNoise (unregistered) in reply to DrPizza
    DrPizza:

    'cos you always pick the lesser of two weevils.

     

    GGAAHHHHH!!!!  pun-sniped.  I bow to you, sir or ma'am. 

  • phiguy (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel

    I'm fairly sure this is just a dehumidifier.

    <>If so there are more WTFs: the admin didn't know the difference- or maybe- neither does the author?

     

    <>I am not a robot.
     

  • I do computers not HVAC (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    That isn't a server room. It is a closet with some computers in it.

     You don't tell us anything about the quality of the installation of the computers so what we've really got is a poor HVAC employee.
     

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    Anonymous:

    We have a half-arsed designed server room. The A/C was underspecced so we got a large industrial portable unit in. The heat was vented to the plenum. However, to make the server room fire-proofy, the plenum of the server room was not connected to the plenum of the rest of the floor (drywall went all the way up) so we ended up having to get someone in to cut holes in the drywall.

    You think that two years later they'd listen to us regarding what is needed in the new server room now we're moving to a new building. Wouldn't you?

    Doesn't that defeat the "fire-proofiness" of the server room?  Which makes it against, um, local fire codes or something.


    Fire codes usually don't count drywall as being a firestop material.
  • foobar92 (unregistered)

    just be glad it's not the US federal gov't.

    it'd be $20M instead of $20K worth of equipment put at risk from crappy facilities management.
     

    captcha: "clueless".  indeed. 

  • hank miller (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    [Fire codes usually don't count drywall as being a firestop material.

    Every firecode I've ever seen counts drywall as firestop. I've only seen residential codes though.

    Drywall made from one of those strange chemicals (much like cement) that include water within the molecule. This is not a chemical bond, the water is a separate molecule trapped inside the gypsum. Or something like that, I don't feel like looking it up this morning. If you want details look it up yourself.

  • PatMetheny (unregistered)

    Reminds me of the game "The Incredible Machine"... (which also included a fish bowl)

    The network admin should have simply positioned a conveyor-belt between the fish-bowl and the outer door, so that the spilled water would be transported outside of the room. Simple puzzle...

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